1. •The robust budgetary assumptions you have stated.  London & LHR to Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds at an estimate of around £20bn (in 2008 terms) equates to approximately £50m per km, obviously varying by route adopted.  
2. •From our 2008 business planning, we are confident that construction and land-take advantages will enable maglev to be delivered within, and most probably below, this range.  
3. •If costs are below the stated range, this would either simply enable a London – Leeds system to be delivered for lower capital cost or, alternatively, permit more km to be constructed within the same overall budget. This would, if desired, extend the benefits, pushing high speed towards Liverpool, the North East and Scotland.
4. •Your intention to “cancel all moves towards a third runway at Heathrow” and your consequent analysis that a substantial percentage of domestic flights to LHR is “likely to be replaced” by more reliable and less polluting high speed ground transport.  By extension the slot-pairs liberated at LHR become available for long haul flights which are more efficient, more economically useful to Britain, and less polluting per seat-km.
5. •Your intention to “make the project possible by backing hybrid legislation in Parliament”.
6. •Your intention to “offer a fixed payment towards land and track, leaving the private sector with all construction and operating risks”, balanced with a requirement on those competing to deliver the link to offer “competitive bids on franchise fees paid to government”.  
7. •In this connection, we welcome the clarity with which you have set out your intention to make available £1.3 bn per annum (in 2008 money) over the period 2015 – 2027.
8. •Your intention to open a competition “immediately on taking office, to enable construction to start by 2015”.
9. •Your translation of the above intention into an immediate process: “over the coming months we will be working up the details of the competition for HSR and consulting further with industry. We intend to ensure this work forms part of our forthcoming discussions with the Civil Service, so the necessary preparations for an immediate competition will have been made before the end of this Parliament.”
10. •Your intention to “require the competitors to guarantee journey times”.  With maglev journey times faster than those achievable by any other means of ground transport, we particularly look forward to this aspect of the competition.  
11. •Above and beyond speed and journey times, we warmly welcome the opportunity to compete 500 km/h (311mph) maglev versus 300 km/h (186mph) wheel-on-steel on all the key metrics including inter alia:
12. •capex;
13. •capacity;
14. •operational efficiency;
15. •environmental benefit;
16. •whole-life costs; and
17. •macro-economic advantage to Britain.